The Ark and The Dove

Showing All Her Cards

Therefore, a bishop must be irreproachable, married only once, temperate, self-controlled, decent, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not aggressive, but gentle, not contentious, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, keeping his children under control with perfect dignity; for if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of the Church of God?

Isabel and I were talking about yesterday's reading, when Paul advises Timothy on what makes a good bishop, and the previous line came up. One of the things that I think is awesome about the Catholic Church is that she takes lines like this and makes them daily readings, even though it's blatantly obvious that it's going to confuse half the people in the pews. Seriously. A less Divinely-inspired Church would have quickly extricated these lines from every lectionary and Bible by now in an effort to make the religion seem more consistent and unchanging (I cringe whenever I hear about the textual history of the Koran). We understand that the passage has to be read in a literary and historical context; and we can even recognize the ideal of celibacy already becoming manifest in these lines (and, of course, some non-Roman rite Catholic Churches are still permitted to marry before ordination to this day).
So, on the one hand, a lay person who doesn't know their history might be startled to hear that bishops were once married; on the other hand, it shows the confidence of the Church that she can continue to present Biblical text that could be startling.

Amazing Stories

When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him and, turning, said to the crowd following him, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” When the messengers returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.

This is, of course, Christ's response to the centurion in Luke 7 that was part of Monday's readings. Now, my layman's gut instinct in the story is to think "Wait a second, how could Jesus be amazed? It makes it sound like he didn't know the centurion was faithful, which would suggest he lacks God's omniscience..."
Far be it from me to assume I can comprehend the psychology or neurological intricacies of the brain of an incarnate God, but here would be my quick response (most likely stolen from countless commentaries read over the years).

Conjecture #1) I'm not crazy about this conjecture, but it might explain some complications here and elsewhere. Was Jesus, as God, omniscient with infinite hard drive space, but Jesus, as pre-glorified man, only able to store so much information in his RAM? Could Jesus "know" things but only be on a need to know basis so far as the information was readily available to his human conscious? That is, we have all kinds of information in our heads that we consciously just don't have immediate access to (think about when he says that He knows what the Father has revealed to him). In this case, Jesus could be both omniscient and be surprised because he didn't have immediate access to his omniscience (just like he surrendered immediate access to his glorified body on the Cross). Again, this is just my little thought experiment for the morning, so don't go quoting this to anyone as...uhm...gospel.

Conjecture #2) Even if Jesus did consciously know the centurion's faith (a conjecture I prefer because it makes Jesus more super-powerful), the intellectual knowledge of a thing never quite compares to the direct experience. Intellectually, I can know which student is probably going to ace the midterm or exam...but that doesn't mean I'm going to be unimpressed when I actually see him or her do it. Christ's amazement doesn't have to be the same as the surprise one has at learning something new; it can be the emotional response to witnessing what one knew to be true all along. Another thing to consider is how many times you can see the same movie and play and still enjoy it, even though you know everything that's going to happen and when.

I suppose my take home point is that this another way of considering just how personal God's relationship is with us. He's not just reading tickertape newsfeeds culled by angels recording our activities...He isn't some kind of Cosmic Matt Drudge compiling data. He is personally invested in our activities, and, indeed, can respond to our actions in ways that we as humans can identify.

 

Taser Tag

By now, you've probably seen this video of the University of Florida incident with the questioner being arrested for refusing to sit down after his allotted question time was up.
In all likelihood, he was a crankcase that had it coming...and I'm not particularly interested in his story so much.
What I do find interesting is that when you see the incident from different camera angles there a lot of empty seats in the auditorium for a speech by Senator Kerry. Kind of tells you what kind of following the man who would be present has.
What I also find interesting is that only a small handful of students reacted by questioning the police. You might recall another video where someone was arrested and tased at a UCLA library. In that incident, a large crowd of students gathered around the incident and started confronting the police in defense of the person they were arresting...and that guy was clearly messed up and deserved to get tased. The guy in Florida, who was just being obnoxious, had only a handful of defenders. In fact, you can clearly hear people in the audience laughing after the guy is shocked.

It almost makes resisting arrest seem like fun (and certainly more entertaining than a speech by Kerry to say the least).

Law of God

You'd think it was an Onion article...but Foxnews reports that a Nebraska senator has filed a lawsuit with God over natural disasters. (The senator is a Democrat, by the way.)

Post-Abortive British Women Debate 13-Week Limit

Six British women give their take on limiting abortions. Incidentally, four of the six regretted their choice and support limiting abortion.

This is Work?

So I was looking at the Gospel reading for today:

On a certain sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered.The scribes and the Pharisees watched him closely to see if he would cure on the sabbath so that they might discover a reason to accuse him. But he realized their intentions and said to the man with the withered hand, “Come up and stand before us.” And he rose and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?”
Looking around at them all, he then said to him, “Stretch out your hand.”
He did so and his hand was restored. But they became enraged and discussed together what they might do to Jesus.

What I find particularly quirky about this reading is that the priests are trying to catch Jesus breaking the Sabbath by curing people. Now my understanding has always been that it is supposed to be a day of rest from labor, so the priests must have seen Christ's healings as some form of work. It isn't unusual for Christ physically to do something in the process of healing, like apply mud to a blind man's eyes to restore sight. It isn't implausible to imagine this as some kind of "work," since there is a physical aspect to it. In the reading above, however, Christ doesn't "do" anything at all other than tell another person to stretch his hand (and if merely issuing and obeying commands was a problem they would have been enraged when he asked the person with the withered hand to come forward).
If you wanted to take this to another level, though, you could bring in source theory of the Old Testament. it's perhaps worth noting that the creation story which involves God making man out of clay through a physical process is considered to be from the older, Yahwist tradition, whereas the version of creation where God merely speaks and creation orders itself to His will is often attributed to the priestly tradition (which is also, I might add, concerned with the aforementioned Sabbath). If you consider it from this angle, it makes more sense why the command would be work, since God spends most of Genesis 1 telling creation what to do, and Genesis 2:2 says God "rested from all the work he had undertaken."

Dailing Readings Podcast

I just discovered that the USCCB Website has the daily readings available as a podcast. It's probably been up there for years by now, but it's new to me.
Not that I'll be downloading any podcasts, since I lack an ipod, but I thought it might be a handy link for one or two of our five remaining regular readers.

Shame on You, Boston College

Dinesh D'Souza's latest column at Townhall.com laments that Boston College won't release video footage of his debate with BC's head of the Boisi Center for Religion, Alan Wolfe. According to D'Souza, he mopped the floor with Wolfe in an effort to defend his latest book from the BC professor...thus, leading the Jesuit college to renege on its offer to make the recorded debate public...

First, I challenged Wolfe to substantiate his extreme charges against me. Not only had he suggested I was a Bin Laden disciple, but in the debate itself he claimed I support sharia or Muslim holy law in the United States and that I want America to ally with people who deny the Holocaust. I demanded that he back up these claims, and he couldn't substantiate a single one. He didn't even try. At one point he said that what he wrote must be true because otherwise the New York Times wouldn't have printed it. Even the liberals in the audience found this laughable. So Wolfe's failure to support his outrageous charges exposed him as an irresponsible slanderer.

Second, I had the opportunity before his own students and colleagues to explore Wolfe's knowledge of Islam. During the cross-examination, I asked Wolfe a series of simple questions about the Muslim world. What percentage of Muslims around the globe live in a democracy? He had no idea. Which is the largest Muslim country in the world? He answered, "India," which is not a Muslim country at all. (The correct answer is Indonesia, which also happens to be a democracy.) I then asked him to name the world's second largest Muslim democracy? Once again Wolfe ventured, "India?" (The correct answer is Bangladesh.) And on it went. I looked into the audience and saw many students, including Wolfe's fans, with their mouths open. They couldn't believe that one of their college's most distinguished professors had been exposed as a complete ignoramus. Remember that this is a fellow who heads the religion center at Boston College.

Yo...er...No, Joe!

According to FoxNews, G.I.Joe is no longer American. Literally. Apparently, there are plans for a new Joe movie (following the success of the Transformers) in which G.I.J.O.E. stands for Globally Integrated Joint Operating Entity.

For years G.I.Joe has been owned by a company called Hasbro, and its figures have been released around the world under different names. For instance, in Great Britain, G.I.Joe was called "Action Force." You'd recognize the characters, but they all have different names and nationalities.

It doesn't entirely bother me that there is an attempt to globalize the franchise, but there is something weird about trying to keep the G.I.Joe moniker with its American implications, and then strip it of everything American about it. It's a bit reminiscent of what happened to Superman last summer, when he no longer stood for truth, justice, and the American way.

I would have rather they made an Action Force the Movie, and had some visiting members from G.I.Joe, The Oktober Guard, etc.

 

A Little Late Night Exegesis

From today's reading:

While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God,
      he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret.
He saw two boats there alongside the lake;
      the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets.
Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon,
      he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore.
Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.

What really struck me about this passage today was that Jesus decided it would be better to preach from a boat.